Tag: Ayn Rand

Donald Trump’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ Moment: Venezuela’s epic failure due to their commitment to socialism

 

I know, I write about Donald Trump a lot these days.  Yes there are many other things going on in the world—especially local issues,  but as I see it we are witnessing the greatest political trend change that the history of the world has ever seen—and I can’t think of anything more important.  It dosen’t do any good to chase the tail of something as long and elusive as our current social trends which are like a very long snake.  What Trump does today will have a tremendous effect on tomorrow, so it is important to capture those little moments as they occur.  Specifically it was the great United Nations speech that Donald Trump gave which illustrated so many positive things for American culture, but none as great as when the topic of Venezuelan socialism was brought forth and put on the world stage for all to see.

I was surprised years ago when so many people were upset that the great American novel Atlas Shrugged was being made into a movie.  I knew the filmmakers, and was a friend of the crew throughout the production and for them it was a love project.  They had a small budget in order to tell a gigantic story—an epic on the scale of Game of Thrones.  Yet Hollywood wouldn’t touch the project through a legitimate studio with A-list actors essentially because the media companies were so deeply contaminated with socialist and communist supporters that such a pro-capitalist story like Atlas Shrugged was never going to get “green-lit.”

Hollywood has always been a little left but it has only been recently that they were so overtly advocated out-right socialist—as a general philosophy.  Their A-list actors, even people like Harrison Ford, have stepped out of reality and onto the socialist band wagon because it is the social trend of Santa Monica valley these days.  If you go into a bar there by the pier talking about the merits of capitalism those weak-kneed she-males and braless bitches will be ready for a fight—they believe in socialism that much.  So when the independent filmmakers of the new Atlas Distribution Company wanted to make a movie out of one of the great American novels for which Atlas Shrugged is and has always been, all the studios laughed at them.  Many years before the studios laughed at Star Wars too, but that’s another story.  I only say that because “group think” does not understand how to make good movies, or how to detect social trends.  Individuals do.  Remember that.

I thought the movie attempt at Atlas Shrugged was ambitious and they managed to do a pretty good job getting the high points down in a visual form.  I would like to see a big budget Netflix series done for Atlas Shrugged that spans for 10 one hour episodes, because I think that’s what it would take to properly tell the story—but it was a bold attempt even as the entertainment unions pushed back hard on anybody associated with the project.  The production could not keep actors from one film to the next as the movies were divided out into three parts.  The actors were beat on so much by the rest of the Hollywood community that all three movies had a different cast and the only ones who signed up were actors looking for something to do.  It was a real challenge and showed me how bad Hollywood really had become.  All the friendly meetings I had with various people over the years flew right out the window as their true intentions were revealed during the production of Atlas Shrugged.

For those who have read the book you know what I’m talking about.  The modern situation in Venezuela is essentially the plot of the book.  A successful country (the United States in the story) is pushed into socialism by their government and the world plunges into darkness.  Once the government establishes things like price controls and root themselves into a severe crony capitalist market, the world falls apart and it is the point of Atlas Shrugged to identify why.  Essentially the “engines” of the world go on strike and that leaves everyone else starving—literally.  The beauty of Atlas Shrugged is that it does something that Karl Marx never achieved—it identified why some people make everything happen while others destroy the world around them—so if the makers of the world fail to participate, economies fail and countries wither away into dust.   The political Left has never come to grips with this phenomenon and this is the aspect of our civilization that is most important to our continuation into the future.  Marxism and all the fruits that fell from it like socialism, communism and fascism all turned out to be rotten short-lived fantasies first breathed by Sir Thomas More in his classic book Utopia—that were destroyed during westward expansion in the United States.   While Marx and his followers were pushing for labor unions to take over the world by controlling the means of production the railroads, the gold rush and the promise of private property in America used capitalism to fill the sky lines of the worlds next great cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles which until that period was just a border town–until the gold rush then the movie industry gave people a reason to live there.

Venezuela had been a pretty good place to live; it was a thriving country living off its oil reserves until Hugo Chavez brought socialism to their economy.   Once Chavez died a member of his inner circle Nicolás Maduro, a former bus driver (seriously) rose to power as a union leader and became the next president.  If you want to see what happens when labor unions get their way by controlling the “means” of production, just look what happened to Venezuela in just a few short years. As the state took over more and more of its industry, they became much less productive and their economy essentially died right in front of the world.  Now the people of Venezuela are starving—literally, and nobody seems to understand why, at least those who have advocated for socialism. Yet it is the nearly seventy year old book Atlas Shrugged that provided an almost page by page analysis for all to read—but the world watched and let it happen to Venezuela anyway.

What was remarkable about Donald Trump’s speech was that most of the people in that general assembly at the United Nations have emotional connections to socialism.  They are either members of Socialist International or they have been thinking about it.  Only the United States has maintained a defense of capitalism and our economy shows it.  The way for more countries around the world to prevent more people from being poor or from having terrible GDP numbers is to unleash capitalism and reject communism.  China’s communism only works if it attaches itself to a capitalist country and can keep the other nations around them poor so that they can maintain some form of price controls.  But if a country to the south like Vietnam were to adopt capitalism, or Cambodia, India or even North Korea—Russia and those types of places—China’s economy would sink because of their communist system.  What happened to Venezuela was that the price of oil went down and they couldn’t compete. That is all the unsaid story before, and no American president would strongly defend capitalism allowing everyone to shrug their shoulders as if they had nothing to do with anything happening to countries like Venezuela.  But when Donald Trump said what he did it put the issue on the front burner in a way nobody was prepared for, and it properly articulated the problem—boldly, people had to listen.  And that was a significant moment in the history of the world that will be remembered for many centuries.  I thought it was tremendous and it will prove to be bigger than anything that happens on the local level because that culture change will flow into the rest of the country rather rapidly.  And I love it!

Rich Hoffman

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The Liberal, Anti-business Big Spender, Joan Powell: Like a cockroach, she wants to loot off the good things produced by West Chester

Don’t be fooled by a person who has been doing it for years as a public figure at Lakota as money grabbing liberal.  Joan Powell is not a Republican, her behavior is indicative of a typical Democrat that has ruined entire cities with their tax and spend policies and now she’s at it again trying to get elected as a West Chester Trustee.  While she brags that she was a Lakota school board member for 16 years she neglects to say how divisive she was while serving in that role.  You can hear all about that situation because I covered her antics on 700 WLW.  That podcast is still available for you to listen to, so enjoy it at the clip below.  Like a typical Democrat, Joan attempts to use transference to impose on others what she herself is guilty of.  It’s not the current West Chester Trustees who are divisive; rather it is Joan the Hutt.  Click here to learn why I call her that—the name is quite appropriate.

Butler County, Ohio where West Chester has become one of the hottest places to live and conduct business in the entire country is distinctly a very Republican place.  There are of course a few bleeding heart liberals here and there who either have government jobs, smoke crack, or take on welfare payments who will vote for Democrats when they run for office, but the numbers just aren’t there to win—so one of the big challenges candidates have is that they often have to pretend to be Republicans so that they can get a fair shake at the ballot box.  Two of the people running for West Chester Trustee seats this year who are certainly Democrats are current board member Lee Wong and now his trustee sidekick Joan Powell, the beat up relic from Lakota’s past.  If they didn’t put an “R” next to their name, they would never get consideration in Butler County and Joan the Liberal Hutt knows that.  However by looking into her past you can tell—for instance she supported Hillary Clinton during the last election even doing a television ad for her.  While Lee Wong associates with people accused of being traitors providing secrets to China, Joan the Hutt was hiding from her many years at Lakota where she served as a union lap dog to the radicals who wanted endless raises for which she had every intention of given them.  When she ran out of money she turned right around and asked the public for more tax increases—which is likely her entire reason for running for a trustee seat.  Money has been tightly controlled under Trustee Mark Welsh who is up for re-election and George Lang.  The public sector unions want a third liberal vote on the board to dump more money into their pockets and Joan is their girl.

But what’s truly disgusting about Joan is her very Hillary Clinton-like election strategies.  Below I have selected three things that she has said on her own website about reasons she is running for this seat that deserve some clarification.   In these three statements Joan the Hutt proves that she is anti-business.  Pro-union—meaning she is willing to put on blindfolds to managing them—just as she did at Lakota schools where she jacked up the costs of payroll to the point where she consistently lived beyond  the budget provided to her by the community.  But worse than anything, she essentially put up Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign strategy against Donald Trump where she stated that one of the reasons she wants to be a trustee is to improve the “tone” of our community.  Here is what she has said about herself.

Joan is concerned about the tone of West Chester’s elected officials during the past year.  In order for our township to prosper, West Chester needs leaders that care about the residents – all residents – and their wants and needs.  The name-calling and disrespect is not the way local leaders should behave.  You can count on Joan to conduct herself with integrity and treat all with common courtesy.

 

Current trustees have done a good job with businesses.  But recently a trustee was cited in the media as saying:  “West Chester puts businesses first.”  Businesses are critically important to any community but residents are the ones who draw the businesses here in the first place.  They need a voice in the direction of the township. 

 

West  Chester needs leaders who are here to serve the township and its residents, not just their own political agendas.  The Right-to-Work movement that two trustees placed as their top priority for 2017 was not really about improving the business climate here.  It was about making their own political statement. 

http://joanpowell4wc.com/why-joan

I always tried to explain to Joan the Hutt some basic economics which she never understood while at Lakota.  Like all Democrats she had no idea where money came from, how people got it and how it goes to work for civilization.  All she knew to do was how to spend money and when she wanted to use it to solidify her base she would raise taxes so that she could give more away to her groups—just like Hillary Clinton.   Without question there will be a sizable number of slugs who want less managerial control over their public sector incomes who will show up to vote for Joan the Hutt on election day not because they like her so much as Joan has a reputation of being very free with budgets in favor of labor unions.  That’s why two of her statements above essentially are talking points right out of labor union literature for which she is more than willing to rubber stamp for a chance to get elected.

But the worst thing Joan the Hutt said in her own literature is this Democratic position of being anti-business. What Joan never understood and obviously still doesn’t is that businesses are what build a healthy community.  It’s not the people first that do it as she suggests.  It is the value of what industry brings that builds a community.  Without jobs there is nothing to do in West Chester, no way to live, work, or pay the enormous tax bills it takes to run all the public sector jobs.   Without businesses West Chester would just be an average community in the country, but because of the wide variety of thriving businesses the people who have moved into West Chester have options.  People don’t move to places like West Chester to be near a sidewalk, or a public library like Democrats like to believe.  Lee Wong is certainly one of those liberals who have never understood basic economics.  When he gets pinned into a corner on any kind of debate on the matter he starts talking about how he was in the military hoping that people won’t further criticism his liberal attitudes.  And Joan is essentially no different.

I was in more than one meeting with some of the leading business people in our community when Joan was the president of the school board at Lakota and I’ve seen her disrespect for business up close and personal.  She truly believes that people just magically appear out of nowhere and start living in homes without some way of building a culture that lures them in the first place.   Joan the Hutt is one of those people who think the entire real estate market at West Chester thrived because of the good Lakota schools, but she’d be wrong. People like her used the schools to make easy sales on new homes which were built and brought to the area through business people.  But it was those people she turned on first when she wanted to raise taxes and they hated her for it.  Like I said, I was in more than a few meetings with those people and I know what they think of her.  That attitude would carry over on a much larger scale if Joan the Hutt were to become a Trustee.  Joan Powell is as anti-business as they get.  She’d be more at home in bankrupt Detroit or Chicago than in West Chester, Ohio.

Like all Democrats when they see budget surpluses, such as what we are seeing now in West Chester because of the good work done by Mark Welsh and George Lang, they arrive like cockroaches and other undesirable insects to loot off the excess.   Joan the Hutt years ago lobbied to make West Chester into a city because she’s a big government advocate who thinks all the answers in life come from more tax money extracted from the public and given it to an ever expanding government.  She is clearly not a Republican.  She has been openly against President Trump and supported Hillary Clinton, and she doesn’t understand basic economics into what makes a community thrive with an anti-business stance that is dangerous to a West Chester that has been very successful at luring in great assets for people to enjoy—which makes them want to spend a lot of money to live in a community that essentially has it all.  West Chester has been successful because it has kept the looting politicians like Joan the Hutt at a distance allowing it to thrive.  People like her will always show up to steal what she can as most typical politicians do, especially liberal ones—but it is up to voters to keep them in check.  That is why she calls herself a Republican when in actuality; she is very far from it.

Rich Hoffman

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Of course the FBI doesn’t want people to see the Clinton Files: They are guilty of hiding her crimes

Likely the same polling firm that thinks Donald Trump’s approval numbers are below 40% is the one that advised the FBI that there was no public interest in revealing the files they had on the former presidential candidate and government thug—Hillary Clinton. Because the FBI isn’t p of the Oval Office, and that they were hedging their bets for their own self-interest. We now know that James Comey purposely let Hillary Clinton off the hook during the email investigation to release those files citing a lack of ‘public interest.’ Well, everyone I know wants to see how the FBI colluded with the Clinton campaign to shut down the investigation into her email scandal—and let’s face it, that is the real reason that government investigative agency is hiding the information—because its embarrassing to them. They never conceived that Donald Trump would end up president and figured Hillary would be the next occupant in the White House so they altered their investigation into her handling of classified data—which was very important at the time since she was seeking a job for the American people who required great handling of classified information. In many ways thinking by means of competency—not criminally—the FBI investigation was supposed to show that she had problems and if the Democratic Party had listened, they would have still had time to try out another candidate. Instead, the villains of the system collaborated to unleash a massive conspiracy that was completely unnecessary only to arrive at this slow leak of detrimental information.

This information is detrimental because it shows that the FBI cannot be trusted—which many of us suspected. But all this just confirms the truth, which is disappointing. Regardless of their apprehension to release those files on Hillary Clinton Wikileaks has promised to release them anyway, so the public will likely get a chance to see them for themselves—and that will really be embarrassing for the FBI. What’s even worse is that given what we know now about the Trump presidency it is very obvious that the leaks which have emerged trying to derail his efforts have come from our intelligence agency—because the behavior of the FBI shows a much more systemic problem that umbrellas out over all government agencies supposedly doing work for the American people.

In many ways, this doesn’t surprise me and I wish it did. People often refer to James Comey as a Boy Scout with honesty to match and that reference has always bothered me because I know all too well what that likely means perception wise. I don’t talk about it much but the primary reason I write on this site every day is because I grew up loving westerns and part of me always wanted to be a sheriff when I grew up. I am actually too ambitious to limit myself to law and order because those things are defined usually by the efforts of politicians, which I think are half-baked people to begin with. While I enjoy simple people like Sheriff Joe Arpaio who live modestly and honestly, I always knew I wanted a more complex and dynamic life. But to satisfy my law and order side, I write so I can live the rest of the parts of my life the way I want. What sealed the deal for me was long ago when I was a prominent member in the Explorer’s community—which was an off-shoot of the Boy Scouts for older kids. I was in a high adventure group which was designed to train kids for occupations that involved “high adventure” like mountain climbing, global exploration and park services. But most Explorer Post groups were to train young people for fire fighting and police work.

Each year we had competitions at a camp just outside Loveland along the Little Miami River where all the Cincinnati area explorer posts competed with each other in various events, like obstacle courses, tug of wars, soft ball tournaments and other activities. We all showed up and camped in our respective areas and would compete and socialize for the entire weekend. I found the people in the fire and police Explorer Posts to be repugnant. They were power-hungry people—all of them—from the leadership down to the 13-year-old kids who wanted to grow up to be a police officer. They were not the good people who our society needed to believe them to be. I always understood that law enforcement was a necessary element to our society, but the people attracted to it tended to be insecure by nature and craving the power of the badge or they were using the role of the job to keep from themselves a tendency toward villainy. I learned a lot about people attracted to the law enforcement profession from my days in the Explorer Post and the impression was not a very high one.

Once I learned what type of people I was dealing with I had a lot of fun working their natures against themselves and the competitions during those summer months were pretty fierce. I took that feedback from them with me to the rest of my life. I understand the need for law enforcement but I don’t feel a need to salute them whenever I see them. They get paid to do a job, but they certainly aren’t gods on earth. They are extensions of our politicians and I don’t have a very high impression of them either, so it comes to no surprise to me at all to learn that the CIA, the FBI, Homeland Security, and the NSA are filled with perverts, losers and power-hungry despots who craved those occupations not because they wanted to become the next Elliot Ness—but because they were fighting in their own natures the tendency to become Frank Nitti. Given the opportunity most people in law enforcement are too tempted to use the privileges to power that they have to act responsibly, and they are prone to bribery and political persuasion if they think doing such a thing will advance their cause.

James Comey broke the law by not prosecuting Hillary Clinton so to preserve her run for president. When she lost Comey and the intelligence community sought actively to undermine the White House of Donald Trump—right out of the gate. They hardly attempted to hide their hostility. And the reason the FBI refuses to let people see the Clinton files isn’t because of some poll. It is because they are guilty of crimes and they fear the retaliation from the public if the truth gets out. It would be foolish to believe that they are not corrupt because they work in service as law enforcement officials. They are more likely to be guilty of such things than most people in general. I/m not saying we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but we do need to always be cautious when dealing with them. Always keep your eye on their gun, because they are more than willing to use it—and it doesn’t matter what color you are. They love authority in law enforcement and will abuse it in a New York minute. Especially if they think they can get something out of it. The FBI obviously thought they were getting something out of Hillary—so they lied and hid the truth. And those files tell us so—which is why they don’t want us to see them.

Rich Hoffman

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Standing With Joe Arpaio and President Trump: Believe me liberals, RINOS, and ANTIFA thugs–you want the protection of law and order–those guys are your friends

It is extremely sad that anyone would consider the pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio as “controversial,” or that they would think anything poor of President Trump for doing so.  We all knew at the time that the Obama administration was abusing the Justice Department as a personal ideological weapon that had become radicalized under Eric Holder and that Arpaio was the target of government aggression issued completely unjustified.  It was clearly a case then of government abuse of authority that was transitory only by the Obama administration specifically.  As a sheriff for over 40 years in Arizona Arpaio had seen it all and was committed to the law has it had been and he did the right thing to stand up to the radicalism of the Obama Justice Department.  What he did was much less severe than what entire cities are doing against President Trump now with the sanctuary city debate and the refusal to respect the executive orders on the travel bans.  All Arpaio did was continue enforcing a law which protected his community from the overwhelming force of one of the most dangerous borders in the world where on one side his constituents resided and on the other the most crime ridden nation on earth.   Here is how Fox News reported it:

President Trump granted a pardon to Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., on Friday.

Arpaio, 85, was recently found guilty of criminal contempt for defying a judge’s order to stop traffic patrols that allegedly targeted immigrants.

He had been charged with misdemeanor contempt of court for allegedly willfully defying a judge’s order in 2011 and prolonging his patrols for another 17 months.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/08/25/sheriff-joe-arpaio-wins-pardon-from-trump.html

At 85 years old Trump couldn’t wait until the end of his term to pardon Arpaio from a bunch of made-up charges—because the man would likely be 93 years old by then.  And the Sheriff has some more to give in this fight for justice and he can start by challenging the seat of Jeff Flake from Arizona. It wouldn’t hurt to see Arpaio primary out Flake so that a friendlier Republican could be elected to the Senate.   Who cares about the optics as they are established by a hostile media intent to overthrow our country into an abyss created by the previous administration.  Clearly the government was wrong in what it did to Arpaio but what is astonishing is that more Republicans did not come to his defense.  That is where Trump understands that part of the problem in Making American Great Again comes in weeding out the weak Republicans from the strong and Arpaio can still help in that process.  So by clearing the good Sheriff’s name now there is a good chance at pushing out a weak Republican in favor of a strong one in the Senate—and that’s where the real controversy stirs.  We’re not talking about law breaking or morality, we’re talking about the swamp protecting itself from Donald Trump draining it when we see that any discussion about Arpaio is “controversial.”

Anyone standing against the Arpaio pardon is part of the problem.  This is not one America right now, and in order to get there, tough things will have to happen and some people are going to be very disappointed.  Arpaio should have never been placed under scrutiny to begin with, which is problem number one.  The purposeful abolishment of our immigration laws to inspire more border violence and an erosion of American sovereignty was a tactical obedience to a domestic hostility that was unwarranted in our history which deserves conflict.   When a hostile entity challenges American happiness with deliberate incursions such things must be met with force, not a bunch of docile Republicans holding hands with insurgent Democrats just to keep the peace for the public eye.  We’re not just going to let these forces take over our country.  We’d be fools to do so, and speaking for myself, I’m not a fool.

I’ve always considered myself a Republican even in the Tea Party days where being a libertarian seemed to be the flavor of the day and people like Glenn Beck were pushing such things.  I was never one to throw my efforts behind Ron Paul or his son Rand.  There are platform things about their movement that I liked, but I could never fully get behind them as candidates for president.  The support of  recreational drugs and lack of global intervention are problems for me because with both come villainy that is often best defined through Christian lenses and someone needs to stop the bullies of the world—otherwise they end up on our doorsteps.  I see the Republican Party as the last great hope of mankind to advance to a new level of civilization and that all other forces from RINOs to communists functioning from the progressive Democrats are working to take us all back to the Vico Cycle through anarchy to the point of theocracy, aristocracy, democracy then back to anarchy every 2000 years or so.  Literally the Republican Party emerged and exists to challenge this endless cycle of human destruction and rebirth.  Republican ideas came to the human race to advance mankind, not to regress it.  It is through Trump that we have our best hope of evolving—and most current Republicans are not up to the fight—and they have always needed to be replaced.

Through the Tea Party many of us have gone to work at replacing weak Republicans and inserting strong ones. That is what happened in 2016 but it has been going on since 2009 essentially.  Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and many other Republicans have come about under the Tea Party flag to weed out weaklings like John Kasich, John Boehner, Eric Canter and many others in favor of more “Republican” representatives without losing our majorities in the House and Senate, and that process is continuing.  John McCain and Jeff Flake both from Arizona are a couple more Republicans that need to be removed so that we can have “proper” conservatives in our Senate and not weak-kneed pacifists who buckle before the hostilities of ANTIFA and other leftist groups with appeasement—strengthening domestic enemies against American concepts—personal freedom, integrity and innovation.

Given all that it is still amazing that there were Republicans who openly spoke out against Trump over the Arpaio pardon—Republicans should be extremely thankful that they have a person like Joe Arpaio in their party and that they have a president who will stand by him even when the liberalized media was intent to make the situation painful.  Courage under fire should be appreciated, and at least respected.  We know who the thugs are in our society and we’ve witnessed them obtaining public offices and abusing their power and we’ve managed for the most part to peacefully remove them from office and replace them with good people.  Trump in this case was the law and order candidate and he was inserted as a peaceful way to restore law and order.  Believe me liberals, ANTIFA thugs and other losers from the Left, you want the protection of law and order—because you don’t want a raw conflict with real conservatives.  Don’t come to my neighborhood with sticks, piss and bats and think you’re going to get away with what you do on the liberal campus of Berkley.  That’s not going to happen where you don’t end up in the hospital.  Trust me, you want law and order—it’s the best friend you have.  Sheriff Joe Arpaio has always been a man of the law and lawless anarchy came knocking on his door which he refused to accept. For that he was punished and threatened quite audaciously—and we couldn’t stand for that.  Part of the reason Trump was elected was because people like Joe Arpaio were being abused—let’s make that clear.  For people who do not stand behind this pardon—it is obvious what side of the battle you are on, and it is they who we must replace in the upcoming election cycles.  Because they are not working for the country—they are working toward the destruction of it.

Rich Hoffman

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The Many Achievements of Trump: How you know the media has been lying

How do you know they are lying? Because “they,” the mainstream media—so-called—won’t tell you all the good things that Donald Trump has so far done as president which Sean Hannity so wonderfully articulated on his television show, seen below. Hannity also showed the extreme level of hatred that the same MSM showed toward Trump’s various speeches over the last couple of weeks. I watched all those speeches and I’m hardly a right-winged lunatic and there were only good things expressed in each of them. There was nothing, “unhenged” in the contents that showed a president unfit for office or bordering on insanity. That’s how you can know the truth, because reality does not reflect what a majority of the news outlets reported, and that makes it obvious that there is something very devious going on.

Obviously I was no Obama fan. But during his first six months I had hopes that he might pull back the regulations on stem cell research and maybe cheerlead the nation a bit. I gave him a shot really for the first year. Even as the storm clouds of decent from the Tea Party started to gather in 2009 I was willing to give the guy a chance, until he proved that he was simply an Alinsky change agent looking to overthrow America from a legislative perspective. I would expect the same treatment of Trump from the political left and he’s not getting it.

Trump hasn’t been in office long enough to make any real mistakes so the rhetoric exhibited by the political left in voluminous detail by the MSN is an obvious sign that there is more to the story than just political ideology in conflict. We’re talking about long-established plans toward a different kind of America that has been rejected by voters through Trump and are crumbling in front of their faces, and they are furious about it.
I’m here to tell you that if these people are this freaked out that there is more they have been hiding that hasn’t been yet revealed, and that means to us that we thankfully elected Donald Trump at just the right time. Already Trump has done more than most presidents hope to do in four years so there will be much more to cheer on soon. But the viciousness of the media towards Trump says everything about their intentions. It’s important that we stick with the president to undo all that these insurgents have planned behind our backs for over a century.

Rich Hoffman
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The Power of Reading: If you want to succeed in life, books are the key

IMG_5095It happens to me at least twice a week where some claim jumper tries to leap onto something I’ve worked very hard for, and they think that if they impose themselves at the finish line that somehow success will find them.  It is the human nature of lazy people to desire to mooch off the efforts of others so rather than do the work themselves they spend that energy looking for some easy way to get ahead in life.  I usually don’t get too upset about those types of things because I know what will happen next.  Once I notice such a thing I immediately give them the wheel to the ship so that they can see how difficult things are once I remove myself from the process—and they crash nearly immediately because they lack the skills to conduct themselves.  When you work hard to dig for the gold and haul it out of a metaphorical canyon up a muddy, slippery trail and at the top some claim jumper wants to then help you carry it to the market with a 50/50 split and call it “team work” I always call bullshit because of the effort is not rooted in equality, or even fairness—but in looting.  When people are willing to work as hard as I do at anything, they then might have the right to some equal portion of the credit.  And in that regard I find this little Twitter statement below to be enormously valuable to people who routinely ask me—how do you do what you do?

For well over forty years now I have read a lot, but once I was married at age 19 I have averaged at least a book a week over that entire time which puts me now at well over a 1000.  I say only a 1000 because some books take me three weeks sometimes, or a month to get through because they are big books or difficult—or both.  But on average it comes out to well over that number because some books can be read in hours or days like Donald Trump’s Think like a Champion or Marx’s Communist Manifesto.  Stupid people like those Karl Marx easy books and that is why they are attracted largely to communist ideas.   I read all types of books, business, fiction, philosophy, history, motivational, conspiracy—there are very few topics that I don’t read.  My favorites have been books by Joseph Campbell and my least favorite are by liberals.  I did just read a book that I picked up in England called The Red Dean of Canterbury by John Butler which I struggled with but learned a lot from.   I struggled with it because I didn’t enjoy the real life character of Hewlett Johnson who was the Dean of Canterbury Cathedral during the World War years.  I was at a book store in Canterbury and they offered the book free to me because I had spent over $200 dollars.  Never one to turn down a book, I took it and I read it mostly while my wife shopped in various English towns.  I always try to make good use of my time which is something else I have little tolerance for.  I’m never bored—I am always doing something and thinking.  Anyway, that book was about how the Dean of Canterbury was a communist who could not separate the philosophy of collectivism from the Christian idea of God’s Kingdom on Earth.  But he was right, there is a lot of similarities between communism and all churches which was not a pleasant read for me—but it was worth struggling through for the thought process of working out difficult concepts.  I don’t just read stuff I enjoy, I read things that often challenge me like James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake which is one of my most treasured accomplishments.  Very few people on earth have worked through that one because of the enormous difficulty in reading it.  It’s essentially written in a dead language where each word has multiple meanings spanning the history of the human race from a European perspective—so you have to know something of European history to even attempt the book.  But it felt good to get through it.

When people ask me how I can write so much, or when they wonder how I can talk for hours and hours about just anything without notes or reference pictures the secret for me is that I have read so many books that I have a massive archive of information to always draw from to apply to any experience.   When somebody asks me something I always have an answer—because after reading over a 1000 books somewhere at some point I encountered someone who had been through it before.  And the process of reading is a superior way of developing information in the brain.  You could read cereal boxes and the process of reading would still benefit you because of the way the eyes have to work with cognitive imagination to paint a picture in the mind to be retained by short and long-term memory.  Reading is simply the best way to learn something and it’s a very individualized experience—which is specific to the human condition.  So yes, I can write over 1000 words a day on this blog because I have millions of words of acquired knowledge bouncing around in my head all the time and formulating those thoughts into these little articles help put context to them for me.  The process of writing therefore puts those thoughts to work and strengthens the neurons in my brain for easy recitation later—when I may need it.  Having all that stored knowledge helps develop that needed gut instinct that is so critical in thinking on your feet under pressure.   That’s essentially how I’m able to extract gold that is valuable to so many people—it certainly isn’t luck.  It’s hard work from my very intensive personal development.

The picture provided is of what is next to my leisure chair in my home.  Often I watch television, review documents on my computer and I read books all at the same time.  I have learned to read while many other things are going on so that multitasking can squeeze in the most activity in any given day and I have found that this gives me a distinct competitive advantage over most everyone I may need to professionally deal with.  I don’t say that to rub it in, but as hopefully some inspiration to those reading this.  When you do something so many times you can get pretty good at it and I can now read a voluminous amount of material—even boring legal stuff without any trouble and still live a fun life—such as watching a football game or a movie with my family.  It is a good skill to develop—high reading comprehension of voluminous material.   However, some of the best days of my life were days where I was able to turn off everything in life and just read a treasured book without interruptions for an entire day or weekend.  That doesn’t happen very often—but when it does, I am a very happy person.

So to me it is quite an insult for anybody to think that they can do what I can without putting in all the hard work.  When people assume they are equal to me without doing the work—it honestly pisses me off.  As I told several people this past week who were obvious claim jumpers and they utilized that famous “team” designation, I explained to them that teams are not made of equal parts of a whole.  Teams are dictatorships where a leader implements something and the rest of the team shuts up and listens—and does what the leader says.   The crap people are learning in college these days where group think rules and everyone gets a trophy is completely wrong.  It’s the person who knows the most and can utilize that knowledge through leadership that matters most.  Teams are the pawns on the chess board that shut up and do what they are told—they are not equal contributors to success.  If you don’t want to be a pawn in the great chess games of life—read more so that you can become a leader.

I started reading to acquire an offensive weapon over my enemies.  When I was a kid—11 to 19 years of age I had already learned martial arts for hand to hand combat and I was a bull whip master—meaning I could put out a candle with a bull whip and pretty much hit any target I wanted using it as a melee weapon.  I felt I could handle any situation presented to me.   For instance, when my wife and I were dating and she was a hot to trot model at 17 years old I had her downtown in Cincinnati in the rough part of town before going to a play at the Taft Theater.  Three big guys on Liberty Street wanted to know why I thought I had the guts to come out of suburbia with such a hot little women and think I could get away with it unimpeded in their neighborhood.   Well, I showed them and we made it to the Taft Theater on time and with only blood stains on my cloths—not from me.  I loved doing that kind of thing and still do.  But it was obvious that the real world wasn’t so literal as those three thugs.  Not everyone fought you face to face, most people do it behind your back.  So to beat them I knew I needed to be smarter and faster minded than them—so I started reading as an intellectual martial art.  Now I do it because I like it, but I started it as an offensive weapon against my many enemies and it worked great.  “Knowledge is power” is more than a cliché, it is quite true.   At this point, it would be hard for anybody to catch up to me so I know going in to any situation that the people I’m dealing with are handicapped and will be easy to intellectually beat.  I don’t rub it in, but I do sleep very well at night knowing that most of the things I do, only I can do.  So a little lesson to those who wonder how and why just remember—you have to do the work.  If people aren’t willing to do that work jumping a claim at the end of a process won’t yield positive results. It will just give me something to laugh at as they struggle under the assumption that we are all equal.  Sorry, we are not.  Some of us work hard.  Some of us work DAMN hard.  And those that do know how to work fly while those who don’t crash quickly and predictably.  You can’t cheat your way through life when knowledge is literally capital.  The best way to get knowledge is to read. It is in my opinion the greatest skill anyone could give themselves and for those who do read a lot—it almost always guarantees success in any venture you might want to embark on.  Which is why the best CEOs out there read an average of 60 books a year—it quite literally is the difference between success and failure.

Rich Hoffman

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The World is not Enough: Thank, God for Hasbro, Sphero, and Nerf

Every now and then I like to cover lighter topics that shed some hope for the human condition.  Occasionally I have written about my observations regarding the new cosplay phenomena and some of the very unique toys being made for kids from really great companies like Hasbro, Nerf and Sphero.  I have no problem admitting that when my wife drags me to the store for whatever reason—usually because she wants my company–that the place I always like to go first is the toy section to see what’s new there.  I have always enjoyed the inventiveness that comes with play and I think the world would be far better off if kids played more and for a longer period of time instead of rushing into puberty too quickly.  They should develop their minds longer than they do and after several discussions with my daughters who are now in their mid twenties I do have some hope that some of the inventiveness that is coming out in the toy markets and cosplay endeavors are the millennial’s generational self correction.

Any analysis into my love of Star Wars as a grown man would conclude that I find the people in those stories more interesting than real people.  The mythology of Star Wars as a whole has in it people I enjoy more than actual interactions.  Now some people might say that my view is unhealthy—that I shouldn’t set my bar for human interaction so high.  I would argue that society doesn’t set its bar for achievement high enough.  As a young person I always measured myself against the unrealistic expectations of the silver screen—not off the terrestrial limits of the real people in my life who I always felt were striving to be, “only human.”  They didn’t think big enough for me—the world they were offering was not enough.  And to a large degree millennials have grown up in broken homes with divorced insecure parents.  Their educations have been a joke and generally the world around them has been a tremendous let-down.  I mean who wants to grow up to be like John McCain? Anybody?  Or Maxine Waters?  How about a news anchor on any network?  Anybody want to be Chris Wallace?  If you have half a brain dear reader, you get my point.  So for their own survival millennials are doing to a larger degree what I always did, they turn to mythology where heroes and villains are larger than life and they base their standards for living off them instead of real people-because they innately recognize that they must do something to overcome the low expectations given to them by the lost generations which came before.

So that is the who and why all these fantastic toys and cosplay devices have emerged and specific to my interest is the Star Wars items from Nerf, Hasbro, and Sphero.   With Force Friday II coming up on September 1st 2017 where all the new Star Wars toys hit the shelves at Wal-Mart, Target and Toys R Us inventories that have been out there for a while since last year’s Rogue One movie is now at a very reduced price so my wife and I have been buying up things we’ve long been watching.  Specifically for me is the Hasbro At-ACT which came out last year for Rogue One but was over $300.  Hard for me to justify spending that kind of money on a toy, but lately it was marked down to $150 so we picked it up.  Another big thing we were able to pick up was the Sphero BB-8 robot which is driven off your smart phone.  In fact that’s what the AT-ACT and BB-8 have in common—both can move around on their own controlled off programming inputted into your iPhone which I think is just phenomenal.   The BB-8 robot from Sphero I think is a remarkable device and after finding it at Wal-Mart for half of its original $150 price tag I thought was a bargain.

For us, even though I enjoy the creativity on display in these new age toys if we didn’t have our grandkids over so much I wouldn’t have much of a desire to get them.  But, the kids are over a lot and I enjoy them immensely so when they are at my house we have all these very epic and expensive things to play with.  I remember how it was as a parent where luxuries were hard to come by and having all these expensive things to play with for the kids was difficult.  But as a grandparent we can afford to give the kids access to those kinds of things so we do, and I enjoy playing with the kids as they build up their brains with positive things I know will last a lifetime.  When kids play they don’t play to be a worthless bureaucrat or an average loser—they play to be a hero that saves the entire galaxy, that is the fantasy and it sets up in their minds the objective to reach for that high bar—even if it’s unrealistic.  It’s better to aim high than to not aim at all.  I also remember what it was like being a kid and I was a unique one.   I built models in the basement of our house very late into my teens and I had a large Star Wars toy collection that I played with until past the 8th grade.  I had a younger brother who had friends come over on Friday nights and we’d have massive Star Wars battles and honestly I found that a lot more fun than what was going on in real life.  I didn’t have any desire to drink, do drugs, use cuss words or play with girls.  The world I had in the basement of our house was far more interesting.  One of those younger kids who came over had a sister my age who was trying to fix me up with one of the prettiest girls in the 8th grade. She wanted me to go to the big homecoming dance with her after the football game.  This girl liked me a lot and had let me know that if I went to the dance with her that she’d let me do anything I wanted to her.  She was two years older than me and could drive.  Guess what I picked?  I chose playing Star Wars with the younger kids rather than messing around with that girl.  I never went to a single school dance until I was in my senior year and that was only to get a picture for my mom to put on her wall.   Many of my parents’ friends thought I was a weird kid so she wanted something to show that I wasn’t so strange.  In reality the toys were more interesting and I still love them to this day.   I can understand fully what cool toys and the freedom from guilt in playing with them can do for children.  I would say that now as an adult I am extremely well-adjusted and a very good problem solver.  I attribute a lot of that to developing my brain with a lot of play as a kid without the hassle of social pressure—like girls in the 8th grade and dances after football games.  Now as an adult with financial means, I do spoil my grandchildren for specifically those reasons—so they can feel the boundless joy of being a kid and discovering so many new things for the first time before life starts clamping down.  When life does clamp down, I want them to intellectually be ready.

And that’s why these toys are so much better than the toys from my youth, because Hasbro and Sphero aren’t just making them for kids.  They are making them for the many adults who now get past their 20s and aren’t interested in what the world has to offer.  As I think about this interesting aspect of our culture I can’t help but think of the James Bond movie The World is not Enough by the musical group Garbage.  That song captures this issue very well, the world is not enough because it doesn’t offer a big enough tapestry to project our hopes and dreams against—so many people find a relief from those limits by fulfilling their imaginations with these very sophisticated toys and these very creative companies understand and are rushing to fill that market need with some really spectacular offerings.  I always loved that song.  Needless to say I am impressed and continue to look forward to the next great thing to come from Hasbro and Sphero. That AT-ACT and the BB-8 droid are just fabulous and will bring a lot of joy to my house.  And I continue to look forward to what they come up with this year for Force Friday. I waited for some of these items for a few years so that the price would come down, but given the great utilization on display, maybe I won’t wait so long next time.

Rich Hoffman

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Mitch McConnell the Underperformer: How the exceptional make the weak feel terrible

Mitch McConnell made a fool out of himself when he returned to his district in Kentucky to essentially throw Donald Trump under the bus for what the senator was not able to do in the Senate. As he said, Trump had unrealistic ideas about the way legislation works and had set ridiculous expectations of achievement—and that it was Trump’s inexperience that was at fault—not him. As he said that Trump was speaking to North Korea in a way that no American president never has where real threats are being made against our sovereign nation. I still don’t think North Korea has the means to attack America—but they showed the intent and that deserves an ass kicking all by itself—so Trump has some things to do. While congress went on vacation the President is still working and solving complicated problems around the world essentially spelling out the entire problem for all to see. Congress is essentially lazy and have grown accustom to doing very little but talk a lot and here was a new President that actually expected to accomplish things—and that was too much for ol’ Mitch—who has been in the Senate too long.

I understand this pushback because I get it all the time—in fact it was just this week where I had to explain to people who thought what I was asking them to do was impossible that it was they who were the problem. Speed and accuracy are equally important in all endeavors. I don’t just practice these things with my bullwhips and fast draw hobbies for fun—there is a deep philosophical necessity in mastering some aspect of speed and accuracy in people’s lives so that they can apply those techniques to a real problem in some regard. Any idiot can stand in front of a target and hit it with a gun, or a whip when time is not applied to create extra pressure. When we do our bullwhip competitions people who are very good technically have a hard time hitting their targets because time is a factor and the pressure often makes them miss. People who are good at managing their speed and accuracy obviously are the people who win the most while those not so good look terrible and incompetent. They may be very accurate and can put out a candle with a bullwhip if they have all the time in the world but they struggle mightily under the pressure of time.

That is why I love cowboy fast draw. My schedule has been too busy to attend a lot of the shooting events this year because most of them take most of a weekend to do, and I don’t have that kind of time to give in 2017—but I practice most every day and I’m currently shooting consistently in the .500s—which is pretty good. The really fast guys are shooting in the .300s which is just over a quarter second. I’m shooting in the half second range which consists in shooting at a 24” target from 21 feet away with a gun in a holster with a single action firearm. To perform the shot a lot of things have to go extremely right and it is quite an exercise to start thinking in fractions of a second.

Most people think in a way that a second is their idea of fast—so when they speak of things in matters of speed their point of reference is in seconds. But when faster than a second is needed to refer to speed, those people do not have the proper vocabulary, or context to comprehend the need. The same can be said of congress. Their unit of measure to articulate their accomplishments have not been based on performance, but purely on bluster. Donald Trump was elected to change the definitions and the people who are struggling with the new definitions are obviously uncomfortable. But they don’t have a right to refuse to act.

In our bullwhip speed and accuracy contests not only is speed a consideration by accuracy is equally important. For instance, for each cup missed on the target line there is a five second deduction. Also there is a line six feet away from the targets and you can’t put your toe on that line otherwise you could incur another 5 second penalty. Even if you ran through the 10 targets in 11 seconds, but you stepped on the line twice and missed two cups, your real-time would be up over 30 seconds which isn’t going to win shit. You have to be fast, and smooth and make little or no mistakes taking nothing for granted. It is possible if you are competent in that kind of endeavor. If you are not, or have drifted through life without being tested—then you can see why some people are very jealous of those with those who can do things accurately—fast.

Mitch McConnell’s “excessive expectations” comment about Trump is just that—a frustrated old legislator who has been exposed as a phone because he isn’t good at anything—especially his field of endeavor which is as a Senator. The only thing McConnel has been good at is deceiving people and getting himself elected year after year on empty promises. For all the time he has been in the Senate Mitch has never been able to find money for the I-75 bridge from Ohio into Kentucky even when the powerful Speaker of the House position was in his friend’s hands John Boehner in the House. Those two couldn’t have completed a shadow on the sidewalk under a hard summer sun at 5 PM on a cloudless day. They were simply lobbyists in waiting or facilitating the needs of lobbyists who fund their campaigns each term. They never planned to do anything but talk as elected representatives. Trump asking them to do anything is an “excessive expectation.”

People like Mitch McConnell are the type of people who always say, “slow down” so that we don’t make mistakes. They want all day to stand in front of a target so that they can hit it. They are the type of people who support a progressive society void of competition because they can’t compete. I always love it when the best bull whip artists come to our competitions. Some of them are the best in the world and have several world records and you bet it feels good to beat them on some of these competitions. We all win our share of things just being good at that sport, so we never get very serious about it. But I know people who hate it when I come to competitions because they fear they won’t have a chance to win. Instead of rising to the challenge they cuss about how it might rob them of a win just by being there. That is what Mitch McConnell is doing with Donald Trump. He wishes that the new president had never been elected because it makes him look bad in comparison and the game as Senator that he has been playing and making a lot of money off of has been exposed. Now he’s supposed to act, and he isn’t prepared. The drag assing hasn’t been working because Trump doesn’t understand the game—that everyone knows congress isn’t supposed to actually accomplish anything. They are supposed to pretend while the shadow government runs everything. Everyone makes their money and the public has been none the wiser. Only we have been wise to it for a long time—and we’re sick of it. That is why we elected Donald Trump. And we expect things to actually be accomplished.

Rich Hoffman
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The City of Losers: Chicago’s demise into oblivion

Chicago is a disaster; by 2025 it will have fewer residents than it does now making any tax hike to pay for its staggering debt even less of an option.  They cannot tax their way out of the trouble they are in and even worse is the state that Chicago is in—Illinois, which is 15 billion dollars in the hole.  15 BILLION—that’s like the GDP of an entire country in some places in the world.  And now that bankrupt city is about to lose 3.2 million dollars in federal Byrne Justice Assistance Grants because Chicago has declared itself a sanctuary city providing protection for illegal immigration.  What a bunch of lunatics.

http://www.mychinews.com/news/chicago-financial-crisis

http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/29/investing/illinois-budget-crisis-downgrade/index.html

http://rightwingnews.com/illegal-immigration-2/sanctuary-city-chicago-sue-doj-threat-losing-federal-money-sanctuary-city/

Granted, the budget in Chicago is a staggering  $9.8 billion—so losing a silly little 3.2 million dollars shouldn’t be a big deal, but the money has been slated to pay for new police cars for their beleaguered law enforcement officers—and when you are that far in debt, everything matters.  Chicago is the poster child for how a bunch of Democrats mismanage everything they do.  Chicago is so bad they couldn’t even make a deal with George Lucas to open the Star Wars museum on the lakefront even as Lucas tried to lay it in Chicago’s lap.  But the loser hippies and distrustful progressives fought the museum—which would have brought some much-needed new money to the city—and Lucas set the project up in Los Angeles instead.  There is no hope for them now and they honestly can’t afford to lose that grant money over being a sanctuary city.

But think about what Chicago is doing.  They are demanding money for breaking the law as their people virtually shoot themselves to death on a daily basis.  As of this writing there are 428 homicides in Chicago just in 2017, which can be seen below for an update.  You can’t tax people to pay for your debt if they kill themselves and scare away people from moving into their neighborhoods.  Aside for the immediate downtown area by the lake—more specifically the Trump Hotel area by the river—Chicago is extremely dangerous.  If you’ve ever flown into O’Hara flying over the downtown area once you get a mile or two west the place looks like a socialist capital from Europe with row houses and beat-up square street blocks  extending for as far as the eye can see.   And the people who live in those homes are largely welfare babies raised in single parent homes, drugs, and depravity.  The sun does not rise and set there as it does other places in the country.  The place is a dump and the crime in the area is indicative of any place maintained by low quality people—low quality because they have no appreciation for intellectual aptitude or human achievement–it has nothing to do with skin color–but attitudes.

http://heyjackass.com/

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-man-61-found-shot-dead-in-garage-in-south-lawndale-20170222-story.html

So along comes Trump and the Department of Justice under Jeff Sessions who seek to clean up Chicago of their gangs and drugs imported through smuggling channels that lead straight to Mexico and are hidden behind illegal immigration.  If you were in the leadership of Chicago such an effort by the feds would really help, because it just might make Chicago more attractive to new investments and residents. After all, what right-minded tax payer wants to live in such high crime areas but slugs, deadbeats and whores?  Bizarrely Rahm Emanuel is resistant insisting to protect those same gang members under the guise that they represent a group of well-intentioned immigrants.  Now why would little man Rahm do something like that?

Obviously the Mayor of Chicago has no intention to fix his budget problem and is following the entire state on a death spiral of economic viability that will not last into the future.  Literally for Rahm Emanuel is the sobering reality that Trump is president and the world isn’t going to come to the rescue of Chicago the way that progressives always planned.  The money just isn’t there, nor is the will.  Chicago has lost its place as a special place in the heart of America because people are sick of hearing about the excessive murder rate and hypocritical nature of its politicians.  Chicago used to be one of America’s great cities, but now it’s just a dying shell of old buildings and lost people.  Take a walk through the airport sometime and you’ll understand what I’m talking about.

Chicago filed a lawsuit against the DOJ to extract the money they think they are owed and people are watching.  Through the process of this public relations stunt by Emanuel even more people will become turned off by Chicago—as if the murder rate wasn’t embarrassing enough.  By taking on a big national campaign against the DOJ Chicago is insistent to scare away any potential new money that might flow into their economy—which is the worst thing they could do at this point.  It’s not about the 3.2 million in grants, it’s the big dollar new business that might be out there and want to set up shop in Chicago.  After all, that’s the only way they could ever hope to solve their fiscal crises.  Instead of nurturing more wealth to return to Chicago they are instead hedging their entire future on illegal aliens who flock to that sanctuary city from socialist and communist countries around the world in search of running water.  Those people do not, nor will they ever have money to pay for the massive debts Chicago has—so Chicago by their own actions is as good as over.  Only they don’t yet realize it.

Years ago the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was filmed in Chicago and that was only in 1986.  Back then Chicago was pretty nice, the South Side was pretty rough but when people thought of murder in that city they thought of Al Capone.  In just thirty years Chicago has destroyed itself with massive debt, terrible public policy shaped by progressive politics and has attached their star to the a sinking ship pension system.  Chicago abused their beautiful city and its placement on the great lakes of the Midwest and they loaded it with a progressive philosophy which has not only destroyed the city, but have destroyed the lives of the people they proclaim to protect.  Wherever you go in the world you can see the depleted results of what progressive philosophy does—whether it’s in Venezuela, Africa, China, or Paris and everywhere you see slugs living off the state and barely living lives of any worth.  Chicago is certainly on that trajectory.  Today they are nothing like that nice city seen in that popular 1986 film.  The only place you can still have a good experience is downtown—and that is shrinking at a remarkable rate—essentially because they are broke.  Chicago killed itself way back in 1995 when they failed to get their legacy costs under control and kicked the can down the road until they ran out of road. Now they have no other recourse but to kill themselves.

Rahm Emanuel is building his case to save Chicago by actually breaking the law and turning away people who might save it in favor of the people who will guarantee its destruction.  As hard as it might be to take a hard stance against illegal immigration if you are looking to preserve something you can’t overload it with destructive elements and Chicago needs value not more depleted people.  It’s nice to have a city like Chicago have so much surpluses that poor people might have a good standard of living but you can’t have a majority of the people be poor and expect the budget to work out to support such a large population.  You can’t pay your teachers $85K per year, or your cops over six figures with unlimited overtime, and you can’t get upside down with pensions as your population decreases.  And by raising taxes more people will leave making the budget even worse. And thus we have a city run by Democrats under a progressive philosophy not rooted in reality—and the only thing they now have in their favor is that they can call themselves a sanctuary city—a place to hide from the law.  And that makes them all terribly pathetic.

Rich Hoffman

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Trump the Author: Predicting the future by reading the past

I enjoy these little banters between Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck because they show why the former media icon is now on the outside looking in.  Both of them really were handily defeated at Fox News and cast into the oblivion by their enemies and yet they still don’t seem to understand why.  They are both still effective, Beck with his radio show and O’Reilly with is best-selling books—but both have lost big to the political left and are still seething from the experience.   It is bizarre to hear what these people say regarding advice for Donald Trump’s presidency.  I mean they are both industry insiders so they know the players and the game—but they still don’t get it.  It’s astonishing to hear them speak as history lunges itself forward then looking back on everything in retrospect in a way.

The movements and the pageantry of the Trump administration over the last week, first in letting Sean Spicer go then Reince Preibus so soon in their tenures within the White House is a good thing, certainly not bad.  And the warning shots at Jeff Sessions were productive—because it got that horse of a Justice Department that is used to standing around doing nothing all the time on the track and running.  A good manager knows how to assess a situation and when to adjust to it. We don’t care how things have been done in the past, or how long previous press secretaries have done their jobs in previous administrations.  When people show that they are struggling or better people come along, it is important to make the switch as soon as possible—and to have the courage to do so in order to fulfill an objective even though you might personally like the people you’re dealing with.   I think Trump liked Reince and Spicer a lot, but he likes winning better—so it was time to make some cuts to the team to get better. And there is nothing wrong with that.

I feel like I know Trump really well—maybe better than Bill O’Reilly does.  Sure O’Reilly “knows“Trump.  They’ve been to baseball games together and played around together but even so I think the personality and thinking of Trump is an enigma to O’Reilly.  You can do things with people and even be friends with them without actually knowing who they are.  However, as a personality type I process information in a similar way as Trump.  Like me he is very open about himself and the world around him in his vast writings, which is something most people don’t know about him.  He has written a lot and he enjoys it—and it is impossible not to notice aspects of his character within his work.   A lot of Trump’s writing is autobiographical so it’s filled with a lot of unintentional self-analysis.  And that is certainly not a negative; it makes me feel greatly for the new president.  He is very open about himself and how he thinks because he always intended with his books to mentor other people into success.  He is not a selfish person by any means—even though he comes across that way to the uninformed eye.  For instance given the nature of the current show Saturday Night Live and how they’ve treated him it is stunning to go back into one of his decade old classics and read what he said about a 2004 experience he had with Jeff Zucker at NBC and the rest of the SNL cast when he was asked to guest host the show.

It was in Trump’s book Think Like a Billionaire that he broke down little trinkets of successful thinking usually with only a page or two long chapters throughout.  But when it came to the chapter on his experience at the 2004 filming of Saturday Night Live he goes on for seven pages meticulously detailing the entire week leading up to the filming. It was obviously quite an honor for Trump to be asked to host the show and it was fascinating to learn of all the people involved because many of them are his dire enemies now.  They loved him when he had the top show on NBC with The Apprentice.  They liked him so long as he stayed somewhere that they felt they had control of his big personality.  But when he decided to quit and run for president in 2015 they all literally turned against him.  It is all very Atlas Shrugged—right off the pages of Ayn Rand.  It’s bizarre to read these things in hind-sight.  I read quite a lot and I have read all Trump’s books before just because they were part of popular culture and I felt I needed to keep up with what was happening and he turned out to be a pretty interesting person.  But to read what happened and how everyone thought ten and twenty years ago about the person who is now president is truly fascinating.  I have enjoyed re-reading Trump’s books lately with the benefit of hindsight.  For instance it was truly enthralling to read Trump talk about the Access Hollywood stuff with Billy Bush 11 years before it became a scandal which you can do in that same book about his SNL experience.  It really puts things in perspective and if the media wanted to do anything but destroy him, they’d go back and study the subject like I am.  Anyway, it was obvious by his own writing that he really loved his Saturday Night Live experience and wanted to treasure it forever.  But after becoming president all his old friends literally sought to rip away from him anything good that had ever happened between them.  It’s like reading about a bad divorce.  Whenever I hear such things you know that two people said really marvelous things to each other at some point—otherwise they never would have been married.  But once one of them cheats on the other or something else happens you hear about all the bad breath, how fat the other person is, and how they don’t do this or that correctly.  NBC literally kissed the ass of Donald Trump because he was a big money-maker for them and they felt betrayed when he stepped into politics and took away their progressive platform to the White House. They could have kept it if they chose, but instead they went on the attack literally for all the reasons that John Galt was attacked in Atlas Shrugged.

Trump is battle hardened like no other president in history and I think he’s doing a marvelous job—and he will be remembered as the greatest that we’ve ever had.   Every day is literally a historic occasion in his White House. And if you know Trump you can just imagine what’s coming next with some accuracy.  Going back to the Saturday Night Live chapter of Think Like a Billionaire and applying the whirlwind energy and sheer number of people who Trump dealt with back then on a daily basis you can easily imagine what it must be like for the people working around Trump now in the White House.  I can see easily how people like Sean Spicer and Reince Preibus made mistakes just in trying to keep up with him.  Unlike me, Trump likes people and he spends a lot of time with them and enjoying conversations. That is where he and I part company to quite an extreme.  I don’t like people even though I feel compassion and empathy for them, I tend to feel like everyone wants something so I am very discriminate how I spend my time with them.  Donald Trump isn’t like that—he enjoys people yet he enjoys himself too—he has a great balance and it works for him—which is how he became so rich and successful to begin with—he did it the old-fashioned way with really hard work and lots of networking.

Yes it hurts Trump that people who used to like him at The New York Times and at SNL are now his mortal enemies.  And it hurts him when friends like Reince Preibus fails to step up to the scope of the job Trump has elevated the White House to—but this is the guy who created Trump Tower and many other remarkable properties all over the world well before NBC approached him to do The Apprentice.  Trump built himself and his brand and a lot of people tagged along for the ride.  But they do sometimes fall off.  The biggest difference between Trump and all other previous presidents is that he doesn’t stop to pick people up.  He feels sorry for people but he doesn’t allow that sorrow to change the course of excellence that he personally strives for every single day.  Trump is the American dream—he is a product of our country to every degree and he has a very intense desire to give back to it.  And he’s going to do so in spite of what anybody else has to say about it—and it is that element that Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck miss about President Trump.  Neither one of them gets it—and out of anybody they should know best.   But their static thinking just won’t allow them to see what’s really going on because their formulative thinking has been forged by previous administrations—which is a major mistake because Trump has no intention on being anything less than the best and most unusual administration in the history of the world.  Anything short of that he would consider a failure and as he is writing the books of this last chapter of his life—and he’s not going to end on anything less than a spectacular climax.  It’s just not the way he does things.

Rich Hoffman

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